Entries in picturephone
(58)

This unnamed Pacific Bell concept video from 1991 is set in the year 2003. With a young woman giving birth as our main plot device, we're able to see how people of the 21st century will work, shop and communicate. Below is part 1 of 3.

The November 23, 1956 Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, CA) ran this picture of the "TV-Phone" of the future. If I'm not mistaken, that looks like Dick Clark on the screen.

The phone of the future will fit in the palm of the hand and enable a caller to hear and see the other party in color and 3-D. That's the concept of Harold S. Osborne, retired chief engineer of the American Telephone and Telegraph Co., as pictured and described in the September issue of Mechanix Illustrated Magazine. On the other side of the pocket watch-sized videophone are buttons which Osborne says the caller of tomorrow will push to talk to anyone anywhere on earth. The device may be carried in a pocket or purse, or worn as a locket, Osborne says.

Part 2 of the 1987 concept video Classroom of the Future is fairly accurate in depicting what the Internet would eventually allow people to do. Again, the voice synthesis and recognition seem superfluous.

The 1987 GTE concept video Classroom of the Future demonstrates videophone technology as an essential tool in making people more productive. Sadly, it doesn't seem like kids of the future are any more intelligent. Check out part one of this paleo-futuristic gem.